With this blog I will focus on intentional thoughtful small tasks that you can do to improve your individual performance. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Grit: Born or Nurtured

Grit has two
simple meanings as defined by Merriam-Webster online dictionary. The first definition
of grit is very small pieces of sand or stone. The second definition of grit is
mental toughness and courage. Grit is also defined in psychology as a positive,
non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term
goal, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their objective.

According to
Merriam-Webster, grit is in the top twenty percent of words used. Perhaps the
word is more popular because Angela Duckworth.

Ms. Duckworth, professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and founder and
Scientific Director of the Character Lab, whose mission is to advance the
science and practice of character development. When Duckworth was in her late
twenties, she left her job as a management consultant to teach math to seventh
graders in the NYC public school system. During her experience in the classroom
she noticed that effort not talent was enormously central in success outcomes.

In a 2009
paper, she and co-author Patrick Quinn developed a “grit scale” for 1,218 new West
Point cadets. Duckworth and Quinn used the cadets answers to the grit scale and
reached the conclusion that grit was highly predictive of the chance of
completing “Beast Barracks.” This West Point program for freshman cadets consisted
of 17-hour days for seven consecutive weeks of classroom instruction and
physical training.

In her 2013 seminal
six minutes and twelve seconds TED presentation, which has been viewed over 8
million times, Duckworth was propelled to prominence as she explained how grit plays
a role in success. Her first book published in 2016, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, was a New York Times
bestseller. The book wanted to explain why some individuals succeed and others
fail. Her research found that talent is not a guarantor of success and that
grit—a combination of passion and perseverance for an important goal is the
foundation of high achievers in every field.

What
distinguished high performers, she found, was largely how they processed
feelings of frustration, disappointment, or even boredom. While some
individuals took these as signals to quit and move on to some easier task, high
performers did not. It was as if they had been conditioned to believe that
struggle was not a signal for alarm.

Is grit
overrated when it comes to predicting success? In Marcus Crede's report, Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grid Literature, says that, “My overall
assessment is that grit is far less important than has commonly been assumed
and claimed and it doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know.”

One key
aspect of Crede’s analysis is that the impact of grit is exaggerated,
especially when considering wider populations of individuals—not just high
achievers in Duckworth’s initial studies. Secondly, grit scores and conscientiousness
scores are very highly correlated. This is important because Duckworth’s
research concludes that grit is a skill.

But,
psychologists have determined that conscientiousness isn’t a skill—it’s a personality
trait. According to the field of psychology, a trait is driven by some inexplicable
combination of genetics and ecosystem. Thus, one’s grit is not necessarily changeable,
especially in adulthood, however Duckworth in her writings suggest that grit
is.

Duckworth
also came to another interesting observation about effort and talent. She says
people don’t like “strivers” because then they start questioning themselves and
why they don’t have the success like others. Strivers invite
self-comparisons. Most people like to think that some people are just naturally
more talented than others.

Duckworth says that grit is hard work, tedious and
not attractive. The majority of individuals like to keep their failures private
and their successes broadcasted to the public. Thus, the “hidden” practice among
successful people is costly to society because it hides the amount of failure that
goes into success. We think we don’t have what it takes to succeed and give up. The struggle should not be a signal to give up!Duckworth is the
first to say that the essence of grit remains a mystery. Even if the origins of
grit are difficult to source I believe that stick–to–itiveness does play a role in the outcome of an individual’s
success towards a significant and meaningful goal. I would rather have grit
than be without it!